As Bill says ...
> Hammett (excepting the Op, who's first
> person) kept you outside. In THE GLASS KEY, there's
no description of
> thoughts or emotions at all. That's rare, but
Hammett does it very well,
> as Chandler does with his approach. It'd be
interesting to do a chapter
> of each the other way, but I'm glad they picked the
techniques they did.
THE GLASS KEY is actually very interesting. This sort of
third person some people call objective 3rd because you never
do get inside peoples heads. It's as if a camera is following
the character around, but only that character, so in a way
its more like 1st than some books where third person is used
to give the reader more information than what one character
you can get from that characters perspective.
It makes it very easy to adopt a novel for the screen if it's
written in this way, and that's probably one reason why the
Houston's FALCON is so faithful to book.
The difference between FALCON and KEY is that Hammett took
this objective business one step further and rather than
saying Spade did this or Spade did that, he always says Ned
Beaumont did this or Ned Beaumont did that. Always repeating
both names makes the character seem even more distanced from
the reader, I think.
Also, for what it's worth, I think it's one of the hardest
ways to write a book. There are no "cheats" to convey
emotion--you have to work hard to give the reader the sense
of what the character is feeling without telling him or her
outright: much like an actor would have to work to convey
emotion in reading a screenplay.
--MC
Mark Coggins
coggins@immortalgame.com http://www.vulturecapital.info
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